


Take Two

by WIN



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Best Friends, Gen, Haircuts, Heartbreak, One Year Later, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WIN/pseuds/WIN
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most things are difficult for Hitoka to deal with. Having her heart broken isn't any different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [illan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illan/gifts).



Hitoka really wishes everyone would stop talking about her hair. It’s nothing special that she cut it — lots of girls cut their hair going into second year! There’s really nothing to talk about, so the sooner everyone stops making a big deal out of her short-cropped cut and she can go back to living in relative obscurity, the better, but her classmates won’t stop talking about it.

“It looks cool,” Hinata says, over a dingy cafeteria a week later. “Like, really really cool, maybe one of the warriors from Kenma’s games has the same haircut, I think that’s it? I have to ask him! Let me call him!”

“Don’t call him during school,” says Kageyama, not even looking up from his melon bread. An exaggerated groan and Hinata is slumping against Hitoka’s shoulder with no warning, and that still makes her a little jumpy, but not nearly as much as it would have if it was someone else. Exclamation points and extra question marks burst out of Hinata’s voice in uneven waves every time he talks, which clashes against Kageyama’s solid plateau of a baritone that only ever peaks when it’s related to volleyball, but she’s used to that bizarre harmony by now. Compared to the first time she met them both, they’ve mellowed out considerably.

Kageyama didn’t seem to know what to say the first time he saw her during second year, and Hitoka still wonders if he actually has any sense of object permanence when it comes to the people around him, because he seemed baffled that her hair changed so quickly from the time they hung out the week before school started to their first day back. But she’s kind of relieved at how quickly he’s able to adjust and stop bringing it up, even if that might just be him forgetting she’d ever had a different hairstyle.

“So why’d you cut it?” Hinata asks, persistent in prompting her for an answer she hasn’t given in on letting him know yet. That’s probably the fifth time he’s asked today, alone, and they’re only at lunch! They haven’t even gone to their regularly-scheduled karaoke night yet, where she knows he’ll ramp the well-meaning interrogation up another thousand degrees, or practice, where Ennoshita keeps letting her know that she can always talk to him if she wants to talk to someone who understands, but he’s not going to push her into it.

She definitely isn’t heartbroken. Shimizu leaving to go study in Osaka has nothing to do with why Hitoka cut her hair, thank you very much, but she is sad about a friend moving so far away. Not heartbroken. Not staying up at night thinking about the way Shimizu had gently put her arms around Hitoka’s shoulders and whispered _sorry_ into their first and only hug before pulling away. None of that, for sure, because if she isn’t someone who can get over that then she might be someone who never deserves to be loved again, oh God, she might never be loved again.

Hitoka stares down at her bento and realizes that she’s officially pathetic.

“You should cut your own hair before you start pestering everyone else about theirs, Hinata,” Tsukishima interrupts, leaning in from the center of the table to glare. It’s obviously an attempt at a distraction, and Hitoka sends a silent thanks to Tsukishima, who has the most finely-tuned sense of when she clearly needs the conversation to go somewhere else to distract her from her own terrifyingly loud thoughts. When they didn’t know each other as well, there was a time that Tsukishima wouldn’t have even thought about intervening on her behalf — but a team is a team, and a manager is still a teammate.

Tsukishima’s tiny reminder of their friendship patches over a little bit of the ache in her heart.

With a squawk that would have been right at home from a parrot, Hinata takes the bait and launches into a tirade about his new goal to be the Orange Lion Ace, or something similar that Hitoka misses, because Yamaguchi is leaning across the table with a plateful of fries and a smile.

“Here, these are the ones that aren’t soggy enough for me,” he says, his voice an amused counter-tempo to Hinata’s outraged shrieking. “I separated them out with a fresh napkin, don’t worry, no germs.” Unfortunately for Yamaguchi, that’s a little too much kindness, she realizes when the tears start to burn at the corners of her eyes and streak slow, warm tracks down her cheeks. Horror dawns on his face when he sees that his gesture made her cry, and it only gets paler when Kageyama looks over and realizes what’s going on.

“Yachi is crying,” he announces, not quite having mastered the art of basic human tact by his second year, and Hinata immediately goes silent to stare at her, eyes as big as saucers. The four of them sit and stare at her as she sobs for a few seconds too long, leaving Hitoka to bury her face in her hands. Then they all start yammering about finding her some water, something solid and good to eat, maybe a blanket or a jacket, and Hinata disappears to go find the nurse. It hits her that she’s started crying _in the cafeteria_ when everyone else is trying to eat, so she has no idea how many students are staring at her. She doesn’t want to lift her hands to look. She doesn’t want to know if it means having to face the bright fluorescent lighting and awkward teenage gazes.

“Everyone’s going to remember this forever,” Hitoka whimpers after a few minutes, feeling the sound muffled by her damp fingers. “I’m going to have to drop out and live on the streets and break my mother’s heart because nobody ever stopped talking about that time I cried in the cafeteria and everyone is going to remember this!”

“They won’t talk about this,” Ennoshita says soothingly, one hand rubbing her back and the other offering her a tissue. She has no idea when he showed up — it feels like she’s been crying for at least half an hour, but Hitoka knows logically that it hasn’t been nearly that long, so he must have some kind of captaincy radar for when the people under his charge are upset or in trouble. Or Yamaguchi could have just texted him, which is probably what happens, but Hitoka thinks Ennoshita would have known something was wrong even if he hadn't known who was unhappy.

“They might talk about this,” Tsukishima amends, and she can hear him folding his arms. She at least appreciates the honesty, even if the truth makes her cry harder than she already was, and she can’t stop, which is easily the grossest thing about all of this. Her face probably looks like such a mess and in a small, tiny, stifled way, she’s almost _thankful_ that Shimizu is gone. That she’s not seeing this, that nobody is (hopefully) ever going to tell her about this, that she doesn’t have to deal with Hitoka and her panic ever again.

Tears drip through her hands. Hitoka isn’t doing such a great job at holding them in.

When Hinata comes back with the nurse, she lets Kageyama wrap his volleyball jacket around her shoulders and follows the two of them to the nurse’s office. The squeaking sound of their court sneakers is familiar and she lets herself get lost in it without prying her face free of its shield, settling between them on the observation table and feeling anchored into the world by their presence.

The nurse gently guides her hands away, shines a light in her still-leaking eyes, and leaves her with a cup of water and her human shields on either side to go call Hitoka’s mother. Left alone with two people who aren’t saying anything to try and distract her, the truth eventually overflows like a leaky faucet she's been trying to stop for too long.

“I love Shimizu,” she chokes, _finally_ letting herself put it into words under the dull office lights. “I loved her and — I miss her so much, and I don’t know what to do, and I want to tell her I’m sorry for telling her that I love her, but I do, I love her so, so much…”

They let her cry herself out for a few minutes, both of her chatty best friends completely silent and still, until her sobbing slows to soft hiccups. When it trickles to a stop, Hinata reaches out and puts an arm around her, then both, and Kageyama does the same from her other side. It’s almost enough for her to start crying again, but in a different way — they saw the part of her that scared her the most, the neediest and most heartbroken part, and still thought she deserved a hug.

Hitoka hiccups.

“Let’s pick some songs that are lots and lots of screaming at karaoke today for you, Yacchan,” Hinata suggests, and she laughs at the brand-new nickname, feels the surprisingly real happiness blossom in her chest.

“I’ll teach you how to serve at practice tomorrow,” Kageyama offers, tilting his head to rest it on top of hers. The offer sounds terrifying, and dangerous, and like it could go really bad for everyone involved, and Hitoka really, really wants to try it.

She doesn’t feel stable or solid, not yet. She won’t take back that tiny bit of ground under her own feet until her hair grows back out to where it used to be and she can shyly offer her LINE address to a second-year on the Karasuno Girls’ Volleyball team. Until her mother pulls her into the same kind of hug and tells her that she’s always been proud of everything her daughter has done. Until a thousand other things she can’t imagine really happening finally come to fruition.

But for now, slowly gulping down water and listening to her friends argue about whether she’d be a better blocker or a server without letting her go, Hitoka thinks she already has more than she could have ever asked for.

**Author's Note:**

> I made a [color-coded table diagram](http://imgur.com/Jv1rtUO) to help me remember who’s sitting where at the lunch table, and it ended up making me realize that the colors I associate with the first years don’t mesh very well. At least the characters do!


End file.
